Morris' life story seems like it was right out of a Hollywood script and now it is

JEFF McDONALD, Copyright 2001 San Angelo Standard-Times

Published 5:30 am, Sunday, May 20, 2001

SAN ANGELO -- It was just dinner, the kind of thing that happens every day at one of Austin's many down-home eateries, two men tearing into a plate of chicken fried steak or baby back ribs or some other traditional Texas fare.

It was nothing special, just dinner. To one of them.

To the other, it was just further confirmation that his life story had gotten that much more fairy tale-ish, that his vida had gotten that much more loca.

To Jimmy Morris it was also another once-in-a-lifetime event in two years full of them, proof positive that somewhere along the line his life had become somebody else's dream. After all, when else has a former Reagan County High School science teacher been asked to dine with a movie star?

"I was having dinner with Dennis and I said, `Two years ago I was sitting in a classroom, and now I'm sitting here with you,' " Morris said recently by phone from Austin. "From my side, it's still hard to believe. From his side, it's just another movie he's working on."

Dennis, of course, is Dennis Quaid, and the fact that Morris can drop his first name speaks volumes about where Morris has been lately. Quaid, after all, is a guy who deals in fantasy for a living. Morris is a guy whose life has been one.

By now, we all know the story: How a washed-up minor-league pitcher became a 29-year-old All-American punter at Angelo State, became a high school teacher and baseball coach in Big Lake, became a major-league rookie at age 35. It's just your typical, every day, run-of-the-mill fairy tale.

We all know about "The Bet," as it has come to be known, about how Morris promised his Reagan County players that if they won the 1999 district championship, he would try out for a big-league team even though he was a decade past his prime.

We know about how, four months after leading Reagan County to the playoffs and over 10 years after quitting professional baseball for good, Morris was striking out Texas' Royce Clayton at The Ballpark in Arlington as a reliever for Tampa Bay.

Of course, if we didn't know, we could always buy the book The Oldest Rookie, an autobiography now at a bookstore near you, or wait for the movie.

"It's very strange to see people making a movie about you," Morris said, matter-of-factly. "I'm not sure I'll ever get used to it."

The movie, tentatively entitled The Rookie and slated for release sometime next year, began filming last month near Austin, which is how Morris came to be having dinner with Dennis Quaid.

Quaid will play Morris, meaning he is about to have a film résumé that includes portrayals of Jerry Lee Lewis, Doc Holliday and a guy from Big Lake.

Not surprisingly, it's going to be a Disney movie.

"Only in America, only in sports in America," said Angelo State football coach Jerry Vandergriff, who coached Morris back when he was the best collegiate punter in the nation and about to turn 30.

"It's unbelievable, but at the same time, it's believable."

It's safe to say that Vandergriff has never coached another player whose life story literally became the stuff of Disney.

"Nobody ever even came close," Vandergriff said with a laugh.

Of course, nobody has ever had a story like Morris before.

It's the type of tale that, if you didn't know better, you'd think was made up. A 30-something Texas high school coach makes the major leagues after agreeing to try out if his team won the league title? You'd think that, like a Jimmy Morris fastball, somebody was trying to slip something by you.

"Every time I think about it, it blows my mind," said Joe David Werst, who played first base for Morris at Reagan County High School. "It's one of the neatest stories I've ever heard."

Apparently, it is one of the neatest stories Disney ever heard, too. Last fall, about the same time he was approached to work on an autobiography, he sold his movie rights to the company that Mickey made famous.

"When I heard they were making the movie, I didn't believe it," said Werst, who has since graduated from Reagan County and now attends college at Southwest Texas in San Marcos.

"Why would they make a movie about coach Morris? He's just a regular guy."

Except that for this regular guy, the story just keeps getting more and more unbelievable -- so much so that when Werst recalls his last meeting with Morris ("We were in San Angelo doing an interview with a Japanese news station"), the statement doesn't seem so strange.

It just seems to fit right in with the rest of Mr. Morris' Wild Ride.

In June 2000, arm troubles cut short Morris' first full season in the majors, landing him back in the minors and then back on the operating table of Dr. Frank Jobe, who had first operated on Morris a decade earlier.

Morris was two weeks into spring training with the Dodgers in March when his throwing arm got stiff again.

That is when he decided it was time to retire, which to most people means retreating to a life of RVs and deer blinds and fishing rods. To Morris, it meant a national book tour and a job as a consultant for a movie based on his life story.

Four days out of every week, he is on the road promoting his book -- one week, San Angelo, Austin, Houston, and Dallas; the next week, New York. A good part of his free time is taken up on the movie set.

"It's a lot harder than I ever thought it was," he said of film work. "They just keep doing the same things over and over again."

One day last week, Morris watched eight hours of filming and saw work on two scenes. He went to sleep that night exhausted anyway.

"If I were still playing," Morris said wearily, "I'd probably be getting more rest."

Then there's the book -- a 276-page feel-good tome that Morris co-wrote with Los Angeles author Joel Engel.

Morris calls the book "pretty blunt." Others describe it as an unprecedented tale of human triumph. Both descriptions are fairly accurate.

"It's more than just a baseball book; it's an inspirational book," said Steve Canter, Morris' agent. "Everybody who has ever had a dream can relate to it."

The book recalls what Morris calls his life's "ups and downs," from a rocky childhood to a frustrating stint as a minor leaguer to bouts of marital discord to his days in Big Lake to his improbable life as a major-league pitcher.

The book also has its share of West Texas drama. At Reagan County, Morris claims, former football coach Bill Foster -- whose name is changed to the pseudonym "Sam Simpson" in the book -- made life miserable for him, yelling at him in public, sabotaging his baseball job and once challenging him to a fistfight.

Foster offered no comment on his role in the book, chuckling, "I'm not even going to read it."

Others will, because Morris' story is that heartwarming and that powerful.

Or else they'll just see the movie.

"Anybody who could just survive like he did and keep coming back and keep coming back -- that's what makes it remarkable," Vandergriff said. "That's the kind of story people want to hear about."

Jimmy Morris never really cared much for fairy tales, even after his life became one. The reason, he writes in the epilogue of his autobiography, is that they never tell you what happens after the happily ever after. You never really know Cinderella's future.

Morris' future is just as undefined; his happily ever after still open-ended. A few weeks ago, he was in New York promoting his book. Now he is back home in San Angelo, where he is spending time with his three young children.

They may even watch his 6-year-old's favorite movie, The Parent Trap II, starring Dennis Quaid.

Eventually, he hopes to one day return to college and earn his masters degree. That will make him happy forever after.

"I just want to get home and be with my kids," Morris said.

But to those who knew him back when, back when he was just coach Morris and not The Oldest Rookie, Jimmy Morris will always be a great story -- maybe the great story. He will always be the closest to Hollywood that they will ever get.

"Every time I see anything that has to do with baseball, I think of coach Morris," Werst said. "It's just wild. Very wild."